over the tumbled graves
by hashire
Summary: What happens After (and in which everyone heals, somehow). Rated for character death and similar things.


Part one of two. I wanted to post it when it was completely done but I changed my mind. I do want to finish it before the next chapter drops since it may mess with my ideas. We'll see.

**Warning: Spoilers, ****character death, other things you'd expect from post-Rumbling times.**

* * *

_1._

_A child_, is her first thought as she surveys the damage. _She's just a child_. Connie protected the girl with his body, and, when he looks up at her, tears cut through the dirt smeared on his face. The dust settles around them. He starts babbling about "owing one to Reiner" and "promising," but Mikasa shakes her head. It doesn't matter in this moment.

She sits on the ground, body aching, head pounding, wondering how she even got there, how she managed to grab onto one of the titans trampling everyone in its way. She fell off eventually, dodging dodging dodging until they passed her by.

She sees two things before the world goes dark: Louise, limping toward her, arm hanging at her side, crushed and useless, her uninjured hand clenching the familiar scarf in such a tight fist that her knuckles - no, entire fingers - have turned white. The other is the girl who meets her eyes, the gaze holding the same horror as Mikasa feels, has felt for so, so long.

Mikasa wakes up in a makeshift infirmary. Her wrist is wrapped in bandages, other arm arm covered in tape to hold together deep cuts. They must not have had time to stitch them up: or, perhaps, lacked the resources to do so. When she looks around the room, she understands.

Pools of blood. Moans of pain. Shrieks and cries of people, saying "they're coming, they're coming, _they're coming_." Even after it's happened, it's not over. Not by a long shot.

Her headache returns, worse than before, worse than it's ever been, the light suddenly making her sick. She leans over the side of the bed and vomits. Oh, for a cold pack, some ice, painkillers strong enough to knock her out for days! She covers her eyes against the light still filtering through her lids. This, she wonders, is this hell?

Soft footsteps approach her, announcing the presence of someone who at the very least has the capacity to move. Then comes the sound of a throat clearing. It's not excessively close in reality, but it feels like it's grating against her brain matter. She must do something that causes the person to step back. That, or they noticed the vomit on the floor.

"I…I have an ice pack," they mutter. Mikasa can only grunt, lifting her bad arm before the pain spikes and stops her. She flips the hand over her eyes and curls her fingers in a silent request.

"Thank you," she mutters, gravel dominating the syllables. She cracks an eye open as the cold shocks the skin of her palm, almost moaning in relief at the mere thought of it on her forehead. She sees it's that girl: scrapes dominating her arms, the bandage taped to her face sagging and revealing another on her cheek. There's a cut under her right eye, familiar in location and presentation. "What's your name?" The ice pack almost slips in her hand as she lays it on her forehead. Her eye closes in bliss: as much as she can scrape together in this moment.

"Gabi," she says, almost a whisper, like she's afraid of being heard. Mikasa hears her take in a breath. "Gabi Braun. Reiner…Reiner was my cousin."

"Was?" she murmurs without thinking. There's a rustling noise: maybe the bandage sagging further as Gabi nods?

"He's dead," she says, voice almost too quiet for Mikasa to hear.

She thinks back to the times she attempted to kill Reiner, the times that she failed to do so. She'd given into many dark thoughts about her failures, but now? She feels relief yet pain: pain for this girl - Gabi - standing beside her. A girl whom she does not even know. She doesn't ask how it happened. She'll find out later from someone else, someone who wasn't close to him.

"Are you all right?" Mikasa asks instead, shifting the pack. She feels a prickle on her arm when she flexes it. Something along her bicep drips on her collarbone. It's warm against her skin, and it takes a moment to realize what it is.

"I - I'm fine, but you're bleeding." There's panic in her voice and the sound of feet slapping against the floor. How odd, she thinks, that this girl is so affected by the sight of blood. She's a warrior…she was a warrior? Consciousness slips away once more, arm sagging off to the side and over the edge of the bed as blood starts dripping to the floor, mingling with her vomit and the blood already there.

Mikasa learns many things over the next few days (or perhaps a week): the death toll, the missing-but-presumed-dead, the number of injured who are slowly dying despite all attempts to keep them alive. The names blur together and she's no longer sure who's dead or alive, if _she_ is even alive now.

Louise dies on the first day. She's a few beds over from Mikasa, gasping out breaths under the weight of crushed-to-dust ribs when a titan had slammed her into a building when she'd gotten in front of its finger. Her arm suffered the same fate as a smaller one rushed past her, throwing her back when she stood up. It's painful hearing what happened, painful knowing that she dies without any medicine to dull the feeling because they had gone through it all so fast.

She takes Mikasa's bad hand when she sits by her bed, when Louise cried out for her, blood-crusted scarf still in her grip. Mikasa puts on a brave face through the pain of the tight grip, because Louise deserves it. As she dies, Mikasa wishes that she hadn't seen her that day, wishes she had found inspiration in her in some other form than as a soldier. She's unable to fix the past, to change anything, so she lays a cold hand on Louise's feverish forehead, and she relaxes into her last breath. She dies with a peaceful expression, at the very least, and Mikasa relaxes with the knowledge that she was able to comfort someone.

She doesn't realize she's crying until she turns to find Gabi holding out a tissue. She accepts it, wincing as she pulls her bad hand from Louise's slackened grip. She wipes her eyes, unable to say anything before Gabi is called away. With no injuries that keep her off her feet, the girl has been recruited to help those who need it. Mikasa doesn't know if that was her intention in coming here: she'd heard things about Gabi before they met again, before Mikasa saved her and Sasha's younger sister from a fate neither of them deserved. She talked about the violent acts she committed when Mikasa saved her, and, even though one of those acts had been against one of her closest friends, no hate for the girl materialized inside of her. Only sadness.

Mikasa knows very little about her, other than her affiliation with the Marley military, to become an "honorary Marleyan." Nothing about her life before or her family…except. _Reiner was my cousin_. There are many ways she could have formally introduced herself, but that was the one she chose. Mikasa walks back over to her bed, legs stiff and knees barely bending, wondering if she'd ever be able to ask why, if she wanted to ask why.

Eren, she learns, is among the missing.

"But they don't think he's dead," Connie tells her on the third day after.

"No," Mikasa murmurs, gripping the water glass more tightly than necessary. "He isn't." Connie gives her a long look when she says this, so she clarifies, "I can feel it. I…don't know how or why, but I know." She takes a drink of water not only to wet her dry mouth but to break eye contact. He isn't glaring at her or looking at her within anything like anger - nothing near his expression from the night not long after Sasha died - but it doesn't make her feel comfortable. When she finds him staring at her still, she blurts out, "I don't know where he is, Connie!"

People in the room turn to look at the two of them. Connie holds up one hand - the other arm in a sling for a dislocated shoulder - after leaning back and away from her. Mikasa drops her chin to her chest, frustrated with herself for reacting like that.

"I didn't - I didn't say that. I wasn't trying to imply -"

"I know that," she interrupts, pausing to take another sip of water. She ends up taking a gulp, then another, going until the glass is empty. "It's been…hard." She meets his eyes again, finding his features softened, sad. "Still nothing about Armin?" The words, despite the fact that she just finished drinking, come out as a rasp. Connie's frown deepens - though she's not sure how - and he shakes his head.

The silence stretches. Mikasa sets the glass in her lap, running the pad of her thumb over the rim. It makes a soft noises when it glides over the wet patch from where she drank. There's a noise to her right: a throat clearing. Gabi stands next to her, a pitcher of water in one hand and a damp, grubby rag in the other.

"Do you…?" But she doesn't finish the question. She looks over at Connie with an emotion that isn't quite fear, but fear-edged nervousness. He drains his glass of water and hands it to her. She fills it without a word, handing it back and fumbling over a response to his "thanks." She's less skittish with Mikasa, but still runs when she finishes her task.

"You saved her life," she says.

"I did." He puts his glass on the makeshift table next to her bed. "If I had the chance to do it over, I'd do it again."

"Why?" Connie doesn't answer for a very long time, picking at a frayed spot on the blanket. Mikasa shifts to lean back against the wall, setting her glass down to adjust the pillow behind her. It's not comfortable, but nothing here is.

"The Reiner we knew…he saved me more than once. And I told him I'd pay him back," he says. He's quiet again. Mikasa waits. "And standing by to watch her die…wouldn't have brought Sasha back." The last words catch in his throat. She reaches over to cover his hand in hers. "I don't regret it."

Gabi watches them from across the room, far enough that Mikasa thinks she didn't hear what he said. When she scrubs at her face with the back of her hand before rushing away when called, Mikasa knows she did.

On day five, things calm down. Comparatively, at least. The fatally injured who arrived first have all died. Their bodies are removed efficiently, impassively, often wordlessly. Jean returns from Trost completely inconsolable. He's whisked off to another place before Mikasa can say anything to him. She knows all the answers to her questions without asking them anyway.

It's also the day when she notices Gabi loitering on the other side of the room, holding a clean rag but idling and looking down at her shoes as they scuff along the floor.

"Gabi," she calls, face almost cracking into a smile at the way the girl jumps and whips her head around. She can't because she doesn't know why she's reacting in such a way. Maybe she'll find out. When Gabi looks at her, Mikasa beckons her closer. She does so after hesitating, and hesitates again when Mikasa pats the bed next to her. Mikasa studies her for a long time. "Are you doing all right?"

Gabi gives her an odd look. "Yes. I'm…not injured." She pushes some hair out of her face, unknowingly giving Mikasa a better view of the dark circles under her eyes and the pallor of her skin.

"You've been running yourself ragged," she says, noticing too the way her hands shake as she twists the rag. Mikasa coaxes it away from her, and the shaking becomes more apparent. "Have you eaten?"

"Not today," Gabi admits, looking away.

"Are they not feeding you?" Mikasa's voice raises without her intending it to. But how could they not take care of their staff when there were so many injured and so few spared? Gabi shakes her head immediately.

"No, I've just been too busy," she tries, adding, when she can see Mikasa is not going to accept the answer, "and not hungry." As if on cue, her stomach growls loud enough for Mikasa to hear. She sighs as Gabi fidgets, crossing her arms over herself.

"You deserve to eat," she tells her, leaning forward to lay a hand on her top arm. "And to rest. There are so many people who need your help." Gabi looks confused and, for some reason, scared at what she's said.

"Do I? Do they? I'm a bad person. I've killed your friends. I shot off his head before -"

"Gabi," Mikasa says, stomach twisting at her words. She's heard about it in whispers, what happened to Eren, and doesn't want to hear more. "You're here now. We need to focus on the present." Gabi looks at her with large doe eyes filling with tears. She nods, and Mikasa flags someone down to get her food.

On the sixth morning, Mikasa awakens to someone shivering next to her. She doesn't need to look to know it's Gabi. In her half-asleep state, it takes her a moment to understand what's happening, since it's nowhere near cold in the room. Then, she realizes: a fever. And, based on how hot and sweaty her forehead is under the back of her hand, a high one.

It's bad, Mikasa can tell, as Gabi goes in and out of consciousness frequently during the day. It's worse, she finds, when it becomes apparent that Gabi isn't fighting it. Not hard enough to make a difference.

Mikasa tries hard for her: cold compresses, blankets on blankets, digging in drawer after drawer for fever reducers.

That night, when nothing has changed, Mikasa finally asks her, "Why aren't you fighting it?"

Gabi blinks at her with bleary eyes before shutting them and turning her face away. With that, Mikasa understands that there's nothing more she can do to save her.

But it changes that night. The blond boy she vaguely remembers from the day at the restaurant (before before before _that_), knocked out and held with a knife at his neck by a frantic and out of his mind Nicolo. His clothes are ragged, dirty, his body covered in bruises. He looks around, distraught, agitated, his expression almost hopeless.

She doesn't know his name so she just calls out, "Hey," and waves him over. He rushes to her without hesitation, practically vaulting over the bed when he sees Gabi lying there. He falls to his knees and grabs one hand in both of his.

"Gabi," he whispers with such emotion that tears fill Mikasa's eyes. Maybe…maybe this will do it.

And she's right: Gabi opens her eyes, stares at him with wonder, looks to Mikasa like she doesn't believe her eyes. When Mikasa nods, she turns back to him, reaching with her free hand to touch his face. He leans into the touch and they both start crying.

"Falco," is all she says in a raw voice, with such emotion that Mikasa cries along with them.

The first week After closes with a revelation.

"Falco," Gabi says, sitting up in bed, not quite recovered but nearing that point fast, "why are you so bruised?" His eyes flit over to MIkasa, expression wary and unreadable. She grabs the saucer on which her cup perches and makes to leave (despite her curiosity about the question; why wouldn't he be injured?). She feels their eyes as she walks away.

She intends to go for a walk, to explore the building further. Her legs still ache and ankle throbs with each step (but it's only a sprain and not a break, they told her). She puts her dishes into the basin set aside for it, grabbing the cup to take one last gulp, when she hears Gabi squawk, "What?!" She stops, hand halfway to her mouth, tea sloshing over the rim, and turns. Everyone is looking at the pair.

Falco grows paler with each passing second, and Gabi's eyes are so wide they could almost pop out of her head. Mikasa returns to the bed, motioning to the others that she was taking care of it. The stares slowly turn away.

"What's wrong?" Mikasa asks, sitting on the bed again. Gabi points an almost accusatory finger at Falco, arm shaking a bit.

"He," and then she gulps, "he said -"

"Gabi!" he snaps, tone more controlled than Gabi's but still making her recoil and drop her hand. When he sees her reaction, his shoulders drop and his face, while still pale, flushes. "I - I'm not sure we should say anything. No one else has yet and I don't know if I should. I -"

"Why wouldn't you?! Why would you keep it a secret? You - !" His hand claps over her mouth. His face reflects the horror he must feel at the action, but he doesn't take his hand away.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you." Gabi stares at him with the same wide eyes as before, though there's a tinge of a new emotion there: what, exactly, Mikasa can't place.

"I think," she says, and they both jump at the sound of her voice, "you should both take a breath." She wants an explanation, she really does, but considering the levels of distressed they both are, it's not the time to ask.

Falco sits back, removing his hand from Gabi's face. She takes in a breath, and he follows after a moment. They breathe in and out for such a long time that Mikasa thinks the subject will be dropped and they'll move on to something else.

"You can say it to her," Gabi says. "You can trust her." It takes a moment for Mikasa to realize that Gabi is referring to her. Falco takes another breath, eyes flitting to her once more, and nods.

"I think," he mumbles, "that the curse is gone."

Mikasa lies awake that night, now alone in her bed. Gabi and Falco had gone off elsewhere after they'd eaten: probably back to where the uninjured are being housed.

It's an odd feeling, prickling under her skin, itching at her eyes, gnawing at her bones. She remembers: Eren bursting from the titan the first time; Eren sealing the gate to Wall Maria; Eren talking about having a limited lifespan; Eren. She thinks: Armin lying almost dead on that rooftop; Armin becoming a titan for the first time; Armin taking notes as Eren said the number 13; Armin. They're both gone now.

But they're both alive. She knows it. She can feel it in the marrow of the gnawed-on bones. There's something else on the tip of her tongue that she can almost taste. It eludes her with each and every swallow and grind of her teeth.

What would she do (she thinks instead) if they were there right now? What would she say? She had so much to say, so many things, but. But would he listen? The Eren she saw before they were locked away was not the Eren she'd known for a decade. Or was it, and she was just seeing what she wanted to see for those years?

She turns on her side. That wasn't right. She _knew_ him. Yet does she _know_ him now? The day on the train tracks always comes back to her when she's feeling nervous or confused or anxious about Eren and what he's doing.

He'd live a long life, too, if what Falco said was true. The boy has no reason to lie, and Gabi nodded when he explained that Zeke's scream had turned him into a titan and he'd eaten…whoever it was, he didn't name them. Mikasa wouldn't have known who it was regardless. When he regained consciousness, he was surrounded with debris and unsure how long he'd been unconscious. It shouldn't have taken long to wake up, he says, but he wasn't prepared. Not like they usually were for the transfers.

And, Falco said, something must have changed after he was hit but before he woke up. He was bruised but not dead. Gabi made a face at his words, her frown deepening at, "If I didn't have the healing abilities, at least for a short time, I would have been dead."

"But you're not," Gabi said, and they stopped talking about it after that.

A fist of emotion clamps around her stomach just as she starts to doze: she will see them again. Mikasa knows that she will see Eren and Armin again.

How she felt about it, what the hand that now squeezed her heart meant, she could not identify. _Maybe_, the back of her mind whispers as she falls asleep finally, _you just don't want to_.

No one in the sick room talks about what happened, the extent of the Event. The despair in the room is thick without it.

The arrival of one Kiyomi Azumabito changes that.

Mikasa has healed enough that she can tend to others - the amputees, the gravely sick, the ones who hold on without getting better - which is exactly where Kiyomi finds her: at the bedside of a man with internal injuries who has been hooked up to an IV and has not eaten since the Event. She doesn't even notice the door open as she wipes the sweat from his forehead and hopes he's not going septic. They don't have the supplies to handle it.

"Mikasa!" Kiyomi cries, rushing to her side. She reaches for her arm before seeing the cast on her wrist. "Oh, I thought you hadn't made it!"

Her surprise at Kiyomi's appearance manifests in the form of her dropping the cloth. Of all the people she had thought about in the past days, Kiyomi wasn't one of them (which, at this moment, she isn't sure if she should feel bad about). She glances at the man one last time - he's either asleep or passed out again - and turns fully toward the woman. Kiyomi is bent over, her hands on her knees, panting like she had run there. She probably had.

"I'm doing…fine," Mikasa finally says after the silence stretches to an uncomfortable pull. "Are you all right?"

Kiyomi stands put straight at that, hand on her chest as she continues to catch her breath. "Oh, yes. We made it to the harbor just in time! The plane was able to pick up a few survivors to move them to a safe locations."

"Survivors?" Mikasa blurts out, eyes wide. Because no one spoke about it, she had no idea that others still lived. Of course, relaying news when the world was in this state would be difficult…but what state was the world actually in? "How many?!" Who? She wants to scream, wants to know, aches to find out. Could it have been Eren, Armin, other people whom she knew and loved? Loved…it tacks itself onto the end of the thought without her permission.

"Oh, dear, I wasn't able to keep count of all of them. They moved in and out so fast. Maybe my men know…" She glances over her shoulder. Mikasa doesn't really need more than that. No names. No one important to her.

"It's - it's fine. I'm sure we'll find out when communications pick up again." At this, Kiyomi gives her an odd look: a frown that creases the lines in her face, brow furrowing, the light in her eyes shifting to something…darker. She reaches out and touches Mikasa's arm - the bad one - softly, and it takes everything in her not to flinch.

"While most of the land has been decimated, those alive have been relying on…archaic methods to keep in contact with each other. Have you not heard anything that's happened?"

Mikasa looks past her then, past the men standing around the doorway, to another room across the hall. It's one she's been in many times since she's been there. Yet there's something she hadn't noticed during any of those times: a window. It's small and caked with dust, but, somehow, there is sunlight filtering through. Sunlight. Sunlight. _Sunlight_.

She spent all of this time assuming there was nothing but darkness outside. She spent the time living in darkness inside this place. The dust had been thick the day It happened, blotting out the sun. But dust always settles, and the sun comes up every day, regardless of what's happening on their planet.

"Perhaps we should talk about this in a more…private location," Kiyomi suggests. Mikasa snaps back to the present, looking back down at her. She remembers all of the past interactions in this single moment and frowns.

"I'm sorry," she says, though it's not really what she wants to say. "I can't leave this man. If you feel you can't say what you need to say here, we can talk later."

Kiyomi makes the same nervous, uncomfortable, mildly afraid expression she did when Mikasa asked her why she truly came to Paradis and told her she can't trust Hizuru.

"I think that would be best," she says, reaching to squeeze Mikasa's shoulder and causing an ache to run down her arm into the broken bones of her wrist. "At least," she continues, leaning closer so that her lowered voice can be heard, "the rumbling seems to have been a success, and Hizuru is ready and able to welcome us home."

The shock of the words hits her hard. She grabs Kiyomi's wrist in a grip that may be unnecessarily tight and removes the hand from her shoulder. She lets go, and the arm sags to Kiyomi's side.

"I don't think," Mikasa says, turning to face away from her, "we have anything else to talk about." The man's eyes are open, and it's obvious that he had died in the course of the conversation. She reaches to cover his face with her hand and close them.

"I will be ready if you change your mind," she hears, but it sounds far away. She ignores the woman, waiting for the sound of footsteps to recede. Then, Mikasa crumples to the ground, holding her head as another headache sears through her skull.


End file.
